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#455: Jealousy & Crushes in High School

By
February 28, 2013
Captain Awkward's Dating Guide for Geeks, Dating, Manners, Overthinking It, Reader Questions, rejection
108 Comments

Hello, everyone! I ducked out to South Carolina for a few days to see family. Regular computer access is now restored.

Two links today:

Dear Captain Awkward:

I am a 14 year old and am a freshman in high school. I’m a guy by the way. There’s this other guy that keeps flirting with the girl I like. He’s kind of my friend but since he’s not in my grade, we don’t really talk much or hang out much. After school, I keep seeing him flirting with her and she talks to him and laughs with him occasionally. It gets on my nerves so bad! I really like her and I don’t like the fact that he likes her and is always flirting with her.

I’m jealous because he gets to spend more time with her than I do. I’m a freshmen and she’s a junior. We’re both in band together and that’s practically the only time I get to see her except in between classes, before and after school. I don’t think she likes me and I also don’t think she likes him. What should I do? I want her and I can’t stand to see him always talking to her and her talking to him. I’m jealous. What do I do and how to I get her away from him? She doesn’t really flirt back with him nor does she flirt with me. 

Jealous Guy

Dear Jealous Guy:

This is hard, painful, visceral stuff, but I’m glad you wrote in.

If you want to go out with this girl, ask her.

 

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Question #145: I can make a really good case that my friend should invite me to her party.

By
December 1, 2011
Geek Social Fallacies, Reader Questions, rejection, Social Interactions
40 Comments
Smeagol

Your inner Smeagol will not help you get invited to parties.

Dear Captain Awkward,

Next Saturday someone I consider to be one of my closer friends is having her birthday party.  I have not been invited.  I can’t help but feel a little bit stung about that.  We have a little bit of ‘history’, I suppose, insofar as I have always liked her quite a bit, and she sort-of-rejected me over the summer, but we’re good friends, and I’ve entirely made peace with the fact that, as much as she likes me platonically, she doesn’t have any interest in me romantically.

I think there are two possible explanations for this failure to invite me.  Firstly, she might just not like me that much.  She has considerably more friends than I do, so while I consider her to be one of my closer pals, I’m relatively low on her list, so to speak.  This is obviously a possibility that I would argue against, since we do talk fairly often and we have had ‘heart to heart’ conversations about how glad we are to have become friends etc.

The second possibility is that I’m just not really on her ‘party invitational radar’.  Yesterday, I attended what was essentially my first proper house party (which I quite enjoyed and at which me and this friend spent a lot of time chatting); historically, I either haven’t been invited or, on the rare occasion that I was, been unable to go.  Because I have absolutely no reputation for being interested in attending this kind of thing, perhaps she either didn’t think to invite me, or considered it, but thought I wouldn’t enjoy it?

Anyway, I was wondering firstly whether you think it might be a good idea for me to talk to her about it, directly or indirectly, and secondly, what such communication might comprise?

FWIW I am a 17-year-old male.

Thanks!

There are a lot of reasons your friend maybe didn’t invite you to her party. The ones you identify are actually pretty good ones. What it’s very important to understand is that they are HER reasons. You don’t have to invite everyone (even people you quite like) to gatherings. It’s not a referendum on how much she likes you, it’s a party that she wants to have for herself and invite whoever she wants.

Normally I’m all for speaking up and using words.  Good for you for asking her out and handling rejection well and forming a friendship!  But I think you’re still hung up on this girl. Maybe it’s not in a romantic/sexual way anymore, but you’re hung up on her affection and attention. For example (bolding mine):

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Question #128: “I’m not being mean, I’m being safe!” or, A primer on shutting down awkward conversations with busybodies.

By
November 1, 2011
Friendship, Geek Social Fallacies, How Not To Be, how to say no, manipulation, Manners, Personal Safety, Reader Questions, rejection, saying no, Social Interactions
14 Comments

Dear Captain Awkward,

I’m a high school student, and I had a friend who turned into a stalker. My family, and the school counselor have really helped me through a lot of it. However, I need some help explaining to my friends at school, and the friends of the stalker, of how I absolutely will not be interacting with her, without having to go into all the painful and elaborate details of what happened. The assumption of my casual friends is usually that we had an argument, and now I’m being childish by refusing to speak to her. (Again, high school students, this seems to be a common assumption.) So some of my friends are trying to force me to interact with her. “Just be civil, hold a conversation, just be nice to her, etc.” The school counselor recommends I stay away from her, for my personal safety, and I agree with her.

I’m not worried about my best friends, who understand the issue, but the people who I’m not very well connected with. I don’t want to write a two-page thesis just to get them to understand the problem. I also feel that it’s a violation of my privacy to have to try to explain the issue to anybody who feels like knowing, and letting people know that the way to push my buttons is to bring up the subject. As well as I know that the stalker has been telling people false information, and that anything I tell these friends will likely wind up reaching her.

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Reader question #78: Honor students can also be inappropriate assholes.

By
July 24, 2011
Abuse, How Not To Be, how to say no, Parents, Personal Safety, Reader Questions, Social Interactions
32 Comments

Darling Captain Awkward,

Most of your writers are adults. They deal with adult men. I, a female in high school, come to you with a even worse malignancy… teenage boys.

Oh, but you say: teenage boys? They’re perfectly harmless except for the stray sexual innuendo or the occasional Death Ray Pimple. But I’m also a scientist and mathematician, and I’ll let XKCD summarize what I usually deal with on a daily basis: http://xkcd.com/385/. Maybe add a few more pimples to the guy though. And maybe have, say, a guy to girl ratio of 10 to 1. And maybe fill up that page with sandwich jokes. 
Ignoring them is difficult during activities and labs because we work in teams. I’ve tried standing up for myself but I don’t really do well in panic situations and I’ve ended up gotten in some physical scrapes (nothing bad, but I’m kind of weak). The school has made it clear that they will only slap these guys on the wrist because they’re “honor students.” Pretty much everyone I’ve talked to just tells me that this isn’t a big deal and that I should just let it go. I’m disappointed in myself for not being able to figure this out, and I feel (and have been told) that I bring this onto myself by not laying low and batting my eyelashes. Am I overreacting?  How do I deal with this in the future?

I try to make light of what happens but, really, I am brokenhearted. I’m upset that most of the guys are going to top colleges and that I might not get in. I hate myself for not being able to let this go even though most of them have graduated, and I hate the social standard that I’ve noticed– when talking to my guy friends, they always talk about something productive; when talking to my girl friends, all we talk about is guys and other trivial things, and they don’t want to change. Mostly I’m just sad, lost, and afraid (and that’s not helping me deal with any of this). 
So, thanks, and I would love to hear your input.
Sincerely,
Pi Squared